2009 Chiba Ekiden

You never know where things might take you. You do what you love, and you see what happens – and sometimes you wind up in Japan. Well, I haven’t ended up in Japan, but a woman I run with is right now somewhere in the stratosphere on her way to Chiba, Japan as part of Canada’s entry into the prestigious invitational road relay that’s been held there since 1988.

Here’s how it happened. Denise was part of Nova Scotia’s Timex series team that ran in the Oasis Zoo Run back in October. This race also served as Athletics Canada’s National 10k Road Race Championships. As I mentioned in a previous blog, Denise was the third woman to cross the line that day. Now, if that wasn’t cool enough – a 41 year old mother of three finishing third in Canada – the race also served as the qualifier for the 2009 Chiba Ekiden team. So for her tremendous effort in the zoo run, Athletics Canada rewarded Denise with a spot on the team. Now she’s pretty much the queen of the roads in Canada – and I run intervals with her!!

So what the heck is this Chiba Ekiden thing? Well, I had no idea either before October. Apparently, though, the Japanese are crazy about running, especially marathon running – and they’ll take their marathon running any way they can get it. For variety, the Ekiden takes the marathon distance and chops it up into 6 stages. These 6 legs are run by teams of women and men; they are distributed thus: 5k men, 5k women, 10k men, 5k women, 10k men, 7.195k women. I assume that, like most other road race relays, each leg has a common start and accumulated time decides the winners. I could be wrong, though.

Now the Japanese don’t fool around when it comes to events like this. In order to create the best event possible, they foot the bill for teams of elite runners from around the world to attend. It’s pretty neat – and next to the Olympics and the World Championships, it’s as world class as it gets.

Each invited country sends a total of 8 runners (4 men and 4 women) – 6 who run and 2 alternates (the alternates run a 5k on the track – no free rides here). Last time I talked to Denise, she hadn’t been told what leg she was running (actually, she was most nervous about being chosen as the alternate because she hasn’t run a track race in spikes in over 2 decades!), but she knew who her teammates were: Marilyn Arsenault, Reid Coolsaet, Malindi Elmore, Megan Metcalfe, Richard Mosley, Steve Osaduik, and Dylan Wykes. That’s a pretty amazing team to be a part of!

The team left for Japan today, and they’ll race the Ekiden on Monday. I can only imagine Denise will have an amazing experience, despite a cold and a nagging hamstring issue, which she jokingly blames me for because it showed up when we were doing intervals two Saturdays ago.

The whole thing is pretty cool, and everyone in Cliff’s group specifically and Run Nova Scotia generally is so proud of her. She’s gone from picking up running recreationally about 6 years ago to becoming the Canadian Masters Marathon record holder, a top-10 finisher at Boston, a Nike-sponsored athlete, and now a member of a national team. As Arthur Lydiard said, “There are champions everywhere” – apparently that includes Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.